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Richard Turner – Winning With the Hand You Have Been Dealt

Image: 

Premiere Still from  SXSW Film Festival of "Dealt" - a Documentary film featuring Richard Turner. Photograph by Roger Tam.

By Pramila Komanduri

How would you like to play a game of cards and be able to deal them in a way that you win all the time? This is not an example of card magic but of card mechanics or manipulation, according to Richard Turner who is considered to be one of the top two card mechanics in the world. Based in San Antonio, Texas, he has been performing as a card mechanic for more than 40 years and has entertained audiences around the world with his various skills in manipulating a deck of cards. In 2014 he received the “Close-up Magician of the Year” award, which is the magic industry’s equivalent of an Oscar. His hands are so sensitive to the feel of cards that he has been working as the Touch Analyst for the US Playing Card Co., which is the largest card manufacturer in the US. He has designed several board and puzzle games, including ‘Batty’ which can be downloaded on an iPhone. What makes all this extraordinary is that Richard Turner went legally blind at the young age of nine and eventually lost all of his sight. As a motivational speaker he has addressed many corporate and business audiences with his program about overcoming obstacles, called “Winning With the Hand You Have Been DEALT”. DEALT is an acronym for Dreams (D), Excellence (E), Analysis (A), Loyalty (L) and Tenacity (T). His remarkable experiences and accomplishments are the subject of the feature documentary film, “DEALT”, which is being released theatrically and on VOD in the US in October, 2017 and later to world-wide distribution.
Inerview: 
Question: 
Tell me about your childhood, your family life and aspirations as a child.
Answer: 
I grew up in a suburb of San Diego, Californiain a very modest home. My Dad, Jim, was a hard worker and a very giving man.I was good at art since I was 5 years old. I won state-wide art competitions for boys when I was 8 or 9 years old. When I was 10, a professor at San Diego State University entered my painting under his name in an art competition at the college level. It won first place: I got the blue ribbon and he got the accolades. I drew and painted until I could no longer see the canvas.
Question: 
When did you find out about your visual impairment and how did it affect your life?
Answer: 
When I was 9 my sister, Lori, and I both got scarlet fever and within a few weeks we started losing our vision. I was in 4th. grade and I wasn’t able to read my books.I joined a special school in the Visually Handicapped (VH) department in the 6th. grade. I really hated the word ‘handicapped’.  When I first started losing my sight I was really mad and depressed because I was no longer able to paint or draw like I had been able to before. I rebelled and did a bunch of stupid things. Then I started going to church and realised that we are here not by chance but by purpose and that changed my direction from a destructive way into a constructive way.
Question: 
What support did you get from family and others?
Answer: 
My Mom rejected my sister and me as if we were damaged goods. That was sad for both of us and she finally left the family. My Dad was devoted to us and really gave his all for my sister and me. I met Gene Fisher, a world record body-builder, who became my weight-training coach. I met my karate instructor, John Murphy, in 1971 when I was 16. He set a foundation for me to realise that I could fight my way through any obstacle. His philosophy was: “We don’t care if you are blind, deaf or dumb. We beat everyone equally!” He taught me to “Stare them down like you can see them and bulldoze right through them. Don’t let anyone tell you that something is impossible or can’t be done.”Karate helped stop my rebellion. When I got my first black belt in 1984 I had one of the toughest tests in the country. I had to fight ten men in a row: ten 3-minute rounds with a fresh opponent who is not tired. It was covered on TV by ABC and it was reported on the front page of the Los Angeles Times Sports Section. I got my sixth-degree black belt in karate 28 years later. I haven’t missed working out for 46 years and I am in my 60’s now.
Question: 
How did you get introduced to card mechanics or manipulation?
Answer: 
I was watching a TV show called “Maverick” starring James Garner as a card shark, when I was 7 years old in 1961,and I got interested in cards and the sleight of hand. Mr. Ed Bryan, who ran the VH department in the special school,was an amateur magician from whom I learned tricks.The department had recorded a book called “Expert at the Card Table” which was written in 1902. It was about card sharks, card cheating and the techniques for the card table. I started working on some of the moves from that. When I turned 21 I met Prof.  Dai Vernon who was born in 1894 and lived to be 98 years old. He was known in 1919 as ‘the man who fooled Houdini, the greatest escape artist’. He took a liking to me and I became his protégé. I worked with him for 17 years from 1975 and I was fortunate that he passed on a century’s worth of his most guarded card table artifice and techniques, which is very closely held because of its real purpose to cheat people out of their cash.
Question: 
What is the difference between card mechanics or manipulation and card magic?
Answer: 
There are thousands of card magic tricks. The difference between a card mechanic and a card magician is that the latter is doing something to fool you or trick you but a card mechanic or a card shark can fix a card game and control its outcome to make anybody win or lose. The techniques for the card table are a thousand times more difficult to develop than those used to perform card magic. There are thousands of good card magicians in the world, while there are only around a half dozen good card mechanics in the world because of its extreme difficulty.
Question: 
Are you doing card manipulation as a show or are you employed somewhere to do this?
Answer: 
Oh no! I do it as a show. I started performing in 1972 with a theatre company. I have been performing full-time with the cards for over 40 years since around 1975. My shows kept advancing in the skills and level of difficulty from what I did then to what I do now. I was chased by organized crime families around the world for years to deal cards for them in games in South Africa worth $200,000-$300,000 and I had offers of $1,000,000 to deal cards in the Middle East because of the conditions under which I can cheat. I chose instead to use my skills as a form of entertainment around the world and people pay me to entertain them. Last year I did a 32-city tour through China. I have done shows in Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, the UK and Portugal, just to name a few. Last I heard my act has now been seen on television and other media platforms in 214 countries. Among the Fortune 500 companies and the Fortune 1000 companies it would be easier to say which companies that I have not performed for than the ones that I have.
Question: 
What are some examples of card manipulation tricks?
Answer: 
You can tell me what card game you want to play, how many players you want in the game and which player you want to be the winner. You can shuffle up the deck and hand it to me and I will deal the cards to make that person win or lose any game. Another example: Say that there are 6 players and that you want to sit at position 4. You could say that you would like to have all the 7’s cards. You would shuffle the cards, hand them to me and I would shuffle them 3 times, until the four 7’s cards are in the 4th, 10th, 16th and 22nd positions in the deck. You will see that you get them when you deal the cards out. Another example: you can name a number from 1 to 52 for me to cut the deck of cards. Within a half a second I will cut the deck to the number of cards which you want.
Question: 
What tips would you give a person who wanted to learn to be a card mechanic?
Answer: 
I would ask them to find out if this is their passion. Find somebody that is in this business or find a magician in their neighbourhood or go to magic clubs. There are books, although not so much on card mechanics. I have videos in which I show what I do. I have two students or protégés who have been working on some of my techniques for decades. I can explain it but they have to put in the thousands of hours of practice. I was obsessive with my practice and determined to be top in my field. I would put in 10 to 20 hours every day practising and I maintained that for 7 days a week, for over 26 years. Now I practise only for 3 to 10 hours a day. I practise wherever I am: while watching a movie, at the grocery store or in a car. There is a   difficult move which you can Google in which I deal underneath the top card, called the “Second Deal”. I have done it for a live audience over 5 million times and in practice over 100 million times.
Question: 
What aptitude do you have which makes you a master of card mechanics?
Answer: 
After I lost my vision I was blessed in two ways. One was with an enhanced sense of touch and the other was the ability to see without sight. I have a very rare visual condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) which is a condition where a person who has lost their sight, and should only see black, still sees colours and patterns which were recorded into their subconscious from when they could still see. I am one of the most extreme cases of CBS on the planet, and the only one known to manipulate the colours and patterns into creating functional vision within the mind's eye. I live in a world best described as virtual reality. I see these colours and images in external space and all around me. When I want to remember a phone number I write it in the air and I see it in external space. My mind's eye takes a picture of the number which I will never forget because I have an eidetic memory (which is an ability to recall images stored in memory). I design houses, patios, furniture and board games with this God-given gift.
Question: 
What is the emotional satisfaction that you get out of being a card mechanic?
Answer: 

Listening to my audience’s reactions and their amazement. You have thousands of people in the audience who are just breathless and they are laughing. Performing creates adrenalin. Hearing people become thrilled is a wonderful experience. I never get tired of it.

Question: 
Do you have sources of inspiration for facing challenges, other than the church?
Answer: 

Yes, I am blessed with a wonderful family. I do many,many things together with my beautiful wife of 27 years, Kim, and our son, Asa Spades (his name is a play on Ace of Spades). We just encourage each other and are each other’s rooting section. I really don’t look at anything as a negative obstacle. I always look at any challenge as an adventure and fun.

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